


set it up and tear it down

by cosmogyral



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blackrom, F/F, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-08
Updated: 2011-09-08
Packaged: 2017-10-23 13:04:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogyral/pseuds/cosmogyral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That's how you get a taste of real prey! You wait until they're watching your teeth, and then they don't even see you go for the throat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	set it up and tear it down

**Author's Note:**

> For hs-o bonus round 2b: [originally posted for this mix](http://hs-olympics.livejournal.com/9563.html?thread=1602651#t1602651), but edited a bit for public consumption!

Kanaya is down at the end of the bar, her fingers swathed in white gloves, her whole posture a monument to her unbe _liev_ able sense of drama. Feferi doesn't even want to give her the satisfaction of thinking of it as a piece of theater. Community theater, maybe. All she needs is a cigarette lighter. It's a human performance, like _everything_ Kanaya's good at.

Fef can't stand it. She eels out from the corner of the bar and settles in next to Kanaya. She'll do it a little differently, she'll do it the way her dreams whisper, she'll have one elbow on the bar and the other hand calling for a drink and she'll smile so wide no one who looked at her would ever ever think she could be hiding anything. That's how you get a taste of real prey! You wait until they're watching your teeth, and then they don't even see you go for the throat.

Kanaya's gloved fingers shatter her glass.

"If you can't stand the pressure," Feferi says, "you ought to throw our assignations somewhere _else_ , huh, Kanaya?"

"Your pressure is quite withstandable," Kanaya huffs, picking glass out from between her fingers. It's amazing how she manages to be both pompous and wrong. That's her Kanaya! The try-hardiest. Trying so hard that she slides right into the comfortable world of contempt. "In any case, I have something for you."

Feferi beams at her. "Kanaya! You shouldn't have. I know how hard it is for you to make things stretch."

Kanaya leans under the counter and produces the handbag Feferi expects of her, but when she unlatches it there's a sweet smell that pours off it. She dips a hand in, and draws out a human's head.

"He offered me six or seven million to take you down," she says, snapping it shut again.

Fef's mesmerized by the head. It smells just like grubsauce, well, like nights on the asteroid discovering that landdwellers ate things she couldn't even conceive putting in her mouth, and it must smell incalculably better to Kanaya, one of the colors she can't get enough of, can't even get any of any more; she brought it out here, in a Kate Spade bag, to give to Feferi instead. Community theater. Feferi is filled with a bile she didn't even know she had the capacity for. She grips the bar, and manages, "And you're the only one who can take me down?"

"Hmm? No." Kanaya smiles at her. "I don't care whether you live or die. But you haven't voted for economic independence yet."

When they break the bar, Feferi claws an extra little groan out of Kanaya by telling her that she thinks her host government will pay for it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [set it up and tear it down [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10081637) by [codeswitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/codeswitch/pseuds/codeswitch)




End file.
